THEATER REVIEW: 'An Iliad' resonates in contemporary way

He could be homeless, the tattered fellow carrying a little suitcase. But when he promises us "a good story," one he has sung many times before "in Mycenae, in Babylon, in Gaul," we know he's a poet, the kind who wandered the world singing of arms and the man.

So begins "An Iliad," a solo show that compresses Homer's sweeping epic into a 90-minute tale about the glory and horror of war, about friendship, piety, love and betrayal with all too contemporary resonance. Adapted by Denis O'Hare and Lisa Peterson, who directed the piece in Seattle, New York and now at La Jolla Playhouse, "An Iliad" delivers that good story, with enough wisecracks, undertones and ironies to keep audiences clued in to its timelessness.

There's the title for one, that telltale "An," signalling how many such stories have been and will be told. There's the poet's weary acknowledgment that he no longer sings parts of the story. And wisely, the emotionally nimble performance by craggily handsome, bright-eyed actor Henry Woronicz segues into duets with a musician, virtuoso double-bassist Brian Ellingsen.

"What started it?" the poet asks of the Trojan War with the Greeks. The answer's pretty simple: Helen's been stolen and the Greeks have to get her back. When we meet her ---- and we feel we do in Woronicz's engaged, evocative performance ---- she calls herself "bitch that I am."

O'Hare, a versatile actor who won a Tony for his role as the gay baseball fan in "Take Me Out," and Peterson, the progressive, frequent playhouse guest artist, do an impressive job of scaling Homer's 24-book epic to the exigencies of the stage and their audience.

We never feel we're seeing a just-the-high-points synopsis, but rather a distillation of a world over which the gods preside, impassively watching at times, or, when Zeus allows, intervening for their heroes. Sieges and assaults, flashing swords and magic shields, blood and gore are aplenty in the script.

Amid the clamor, there are quieter moments, too: the recital of Achilles' abiding love and vengeful grief for Patroclus; a domestic scene of comic relief for Hector's wife, Andromache; a breathless, spotlit, global catalog of wars from then through now.

Woronicz also creates a tender impersonation of old Priam begging for the body of his son, the Trojan hero Hector, whose corpse has been dragged behind Achilles' chariot as retribution for the death of Patroclus.

The momentum flags just after the midpoint of the show, but picks up again with these later closeups of Achilles, Hector and Priam, and the negotiations for an 11-day cease-fire so the body can be properly buried. Next comes that Trojan horse, but as The Poet would say, "that's another story."

Basing their adaptation on Robert Fagles' translation from the Greek, O'Hare and Peterson have crafted deft caricatures distinguishing the heroes and penned memorable lines such as "Gods never die; they become our impulses."

Rachel Hauck's bleak, stripped-down set uses the empty stage to reinforce the script's wit-laced subtext about war as theater, and Scott Zielinski's lighting expertly varies the atmosphere of an engaging piece at once exciting and sorrowful.